Going Direct: On The Insanity Of Flying Ubers

By Robert Goyer

The emotional appeal of the flying car is something I don’t understand. Airplanes have been around for a long time, and they’re really good at doing what they do. Cars have been around even longer, and they’re even better at doing what they do, better, to explain, in that cars are supposed to stay firmly planted on the ground instead of fighting with all of its design might to avoid just that fate.

So when I go somewhere, I like to fly there, and then, once I’ve arrived, I just get a car to drive around. There are free or cheap cars just about everywhere I’ve ever flown. And with a couple of good car share apps on my phone, I can always just summon an Uber.

But, for some reason, many find the appeal of a flying car irresistible, to the point where a number of flying cars have been built, though only two of them ever produced, with only a few examples of each, at that. Several others are currently at various stages of development.

And with the rise in drone technology—another subject endlessly fascinating to people, and with some good reasons—it seemed inevitable that someone would comingle the flying car and drones and even go a step further, calling for a huge fleet of on-demand autonomous flying cars that customers can summon with the flick of an app and away you go. Simple! Right?

It’s not, and here’s why.

For starters: physics. We pilots know that it’s impossible to escape the realities of it (except in marketing meetings, of course). So let’s be generous and assume that the aero design works out and you’ve got a flyable craft capable of performing its mission—carrying a single person from point to point with close to 100% reliability. This is, of course, a huge assumption to make, but for the point of argument, we’ll concede that. Also for the sake of argument, let’s say that every customer will be a single person and not a couple, again a big concession. Let’s establish an upper weight limit of, say, 300 pounds.

Okay, so we need to envision a craft capable of carrying 300 pounds for, I don’t know, 10 miles with an endurance of at least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes, or even more when the FAA has its say, which it will. The Feds will be intimately involved in this because there’s a name for a drone that carries a person: “aircraft” and to be more exact “air carrier aircraft.” But to be charitable, we’ll stipulate 300 pounds and an hour.

Propulsion? Well, I don’t think the FAA will start certificating aircraft without giving the engine its blessing, so we’re talking about a certificated or to-be-certificated engine capable of carrying a 275-pound person. I say 275 pounds to apply a factor for passengers being optimistic about their weight. I supposed a weight-on-wheels sensor could ferret out the overly optimistic riders, but then again, autonomous drone customers would self-select as optimists to begin with.

For a close analog, let’s talk a Robinson R22, the best-selling two-seat helicopter ever. It makes use of giant blades and a 180 hp engine de-rated to around 130 hp, and it features a typical fuel payload of around 380 pounds. At a max weight of 1,370 pounds, that’s a pretty good analog, right. So our imaginary drone would need to be at least 80% as powerful, so, let’s say 110 hp, around the power output of a Lycoming O-235 piston engine, which is a popular engine for light airplanes. Of course, we wouldn’t use a piston engine at all, but a powertrain consisting of an electric motor or motors drawing current from a stack of batteries.

Let’s say that that combo of batteries, motors and props and supporting structure weighs in at the same as the fuel, prop and powerplant of the small piston engine I suggested, and we’re looking at a weight for the aircraft, occupant included, of around 1,000 pounds, and, again, I’m being generous here.

Which brings me to the next point: Where will these things fly? I’m going to assume it will be around city centers, because that’s where people want to go and want or need to be, as shown by the large number of people in cities every day. So for the flying Uber to make any sense at all, it would have to literally go to town.

So here’s the most optimistic scenario: a fleet of big, autonomously controlled flying taxis humming below rooftop level in bustling city centers carrying live humans. Hmm. They will, after all, have to land somewhere, right? But where that is, I have no idea and no idea about where to start figuring out where to put these landing zones scattered around the city for dozens or hundreds of these flying taxis. And it couldn’t be a single spot…that would defeat the entire idea of flying taxis. People want to go somewhere specific.

Even if we were to assume that the landing zone issue was solvable, what would these drones do when, not if, they have mechanical issues? Would they autorotate down sans power but props still spinning into the madding crowds of pedestrians below, a thousand pounds or more of whirring propeller blades? It’s not a pretty picture to imagine for the safety of pedestrians or vehicular traffic below. A whole-aircraft chute makes great sense, but only until you factor in the lack of suitable touchdown zones or the additional weight, which would require an even larger and more powerful machine than we’d hypothesized originally.

I could ask how today these problems are being addressed by other small flying aircraft, helicopters. How do they fly buzzing here and there low level in the big cities? But the question would be facetious. Nowhere in the world do helicopters fly in such a fashion, for the very reason that it would be a logistical and safety nightmare.

I’ll skip the mechanical obstacles, because it would be highly speculative, but suffice it to say that there will be no magic involved in getting this aircraft off the ground or keeping it flying.

In the end we’re looking at 1,000 pounds of metal, composites and lithium-polymer batteries tooling around the skies while avoiding wires, skyscrapers and other flying craft while dealing with the same kinds of complex weather phenomena that today’s aircraft deal with but in and among towering walls of stone, glass and steel.

This is all, of course, assuming that the FAA would give thumbs up to a single-power-source craft of a type never certificated before performing passenger-carrying commercial activities. For those of us who fly or know about flying, we can chuckle. It might happen, but not in my lifetime, and I’ve hopefully got a handful of good decades to go.

So I’m not worried about the safety of the flying taxi passenger public. They’re in no danger. This idea might generate publicity, as it has here, but in terms of practical products, it’s not going to happen.

There’s one really good thing it might do, though. Such development will very likely inspire new design ideas that could be used in practical aircraft to come, ones that fly much the same kinds of profiles as we fly today and not imaginary mission scenarios. That kind of research could do some real good.

5 thoughts on “Going Direct: On The Insanity Of Flying Ubers”

Everything you say is true, yet I think it’s also true that there’s room in the world of aviation for “flying cars.” Not roadable things with folding wings, but something like Volocopter — and folks with deep pockets in Dubai are working to make it happen asap. As for urban landing spots, there are rooftops. And Airbus in fact does have helicopters doing this now… check out Voom. Autonomous tech will mean people no longer own cars, but call them when they need them… which will reduce the number of cars dramatically and free up space in cities. It also means you fly in the drone to a city center then call an autonomous taxi to get around in the city… I dont think anyone envisions flying from place to place within the city. You and I might only imagine this world, but our kids and their kids will live in it. Plus hyperloop!

Yes autonomous flying taxis would be a menace buy so would drone package delivery and there are serious efforts to make that happen.

Do you remember the Ad showing a small child waiting patiently behind a sliding glass door while a drone delivers a package to his back yard? I don’t know about any 3 year olds you know, but the ones I know are not staying behind that door unless it is securley locked. Now imagine the delivery to a birthday party with 20 small children.

Risk is increasingly taking a back seat to convenience. Hundreds die every year while “drivers” txt instead of treating a 2 ton killing machine with the respect it deserves. Yet, automakers are not required to install cell blocking technology. Instead they advertise wifi capability as a selling point. But I digress.

Mark my works, drone manufacturers and their customers will make a strong bid to take over class G airspace, if not all airspace below 500′ AGL, very soon. Whether you use class G or not, do you want the sound of drones buzzing around your neghborhood? Consider each overnight package being delivered once a day by truck diwn your street. How many drones will it take to deliver all those packages.

Interesting opinion piece, funny how so many things have naysayers or yaysayers and they have absolutely no way of knowing the outcome, the article would have been better served with actual probability data based on numbers of inventions adopted, transportation types and their adoption, pilot error versus mechanical error and the trend (since back in the 1920’s) that to a greater and greater degree pilots are the cause of aircraft accidents and mechanical issues are less and less (a bitter pill but fact no less, and specifically more so in GA), what would the actual stats look like if pilots were taken out of the equation ( ya I hate it too but I like truth and facts better). As far as noise, the UAV’s I’ve been exposed to operate much quieter than any aircraft I can recall, although I believe there are exceptionally quiet aircraft and exceptionally noisy UAVs where the line may blur between the two. It will be interesting to see what those around in a hundred years from now will think about this article claiming it will never happen.

Oh, I am going to be pilloried for my comment, but think of the fun of sneaking about Ninja-like capturing or downing those delivery drones. People shoot up mail boxes, this will create a new sport, with Amazon howling in protest.

“In the end we’re looking at 1,000 pounds of metal, composites and lithium-polymer batteries tooling around the skies while avoiding wires, skyscrapers and other flying craft while dealing with the same kinds of complex weather phenomena that today’s aircraft deal with but in and among towering walls of stone, glass and steel.”
This will be the Achilles heel of the Uber madness. Just add in the complex wind speeds and wind flow patterns produced by tall buildings in dense cities and these “local weather” conditions will spell doom more often than not. Inertial masses cannot be accelerated instantaneously away from the danger of a sudden updraft or downdraft driving these craft into each other or into a building no matter how good the control system response is…simple physics.